The Vehement Flame eBook

“I think,” said John, huskily, “she
has ... some kind of an ideal up her sleeve.
And I don’t fill the bill. Imagination,
you know. A—­a sort of Sir Walter Raleigh
business. Remember how she was always sort of
dotty on Sir Walter Raleigh? An ideal, don’t
you know”; Johnny rambled on: “Girls
are that way. Only Edith’s the kind that
sticks to things.”

“‘Try, try again,’” said Maurice,
mechanically; but his blood suddenly pounded in his
ears.

“I’m going to,” Johnny said, calmly;
and began to talk South America. Indeed, he talked
so long that Maurice, catching sight of the clock,
exclaimed that he would have to run!

“Johnny, get Eleanor on the wire, will you;
at Mrs. Newbolt’s, and tell her I’d have
called her up, but I got delayed, and had to leg it
to catch the train? Or maybe you wouldn’t
mind going round there, and walking home with her?”

“Glad to,” said Johnny.

When Maurice, swinging on to the last platform of
the last Pullman, was able to sit down in his section,
he was absorbed in Johnny Bennett’s affairs.
“What did he mean by saying that? Did he
mean—­” Johnny’s enigmatical
words rang in his ears; “I said to ’try
again; nobody was cutting him out.’ And
he said ’She has some kind of an ideal up her
sleeve.’ ... ‘A Sir Walter Raleigh
business’ ...”

Johnny Bennett, walking toward Mrs. Newbolt’s,
was also thinking, in his calm way, of just what he
had said there by Maurice’s fireside. “Of
course he doesn’t see why she hasn’t fallen
in love with anybody else. Any decent fellow
would be stupid about that sort of thing. But
it’s been that way ever since she was a child.
And I’ve loved her ever since then, too.
All the same, I’ll only sign up for a year.
Then I’ll make another stab at it ...”

When he rang Mrs. Newbolt’s doorbell, and was
told that Eleanor had not been there, he was perplexed.
“I must have misunderstood Maurice,” he
thought.

CHAPTER XXXI

Eleanor had no intention of going to Mrs. Newbolt’s.
“She’d talk Edith to me!” she said
to herself; “I can’t understand
why she likes her!” Instead of dining with her
aunt, she meant to walk about the streets until she
was sure that Maurice had started for the train; then
she would go back to her own house. So she wandered
down the avenue until, tired of looking with unseeing
eyes into shop windows, it occurred to her to go into
the park; there, on a bench on one of the unfrequented
paths, she sat down, hoping that no one would recognize
her; it was cold, and she shivered and looked at her
watch. Only six o’clock! It would
be two hours before Maurice would leave the house for
the station. It seemed absurd to be here in the
dampness of the March evening; but she couldn’t
go home and get into any discussion with him; she might
burst out again about Edith!—­which always
made him angry. She wished that she had not told